The images you see cycling above are a 30-second slideshow of my working process. (The file is rather large, so it may take a minute or so to download.) Below I go into a little more depth on each step. (From this point onward, click any of the images to enlarge them.)

Just so you know where this process is taking us, here is an image of the finished page, And Then One Day #9 – pg 11, if anyone is curious.

I’ll usually start by scripting my comics in a word processing program. In truth, my scripts are a lot rougher than this, but I tried to label panel descriptions, characters, and dialogue so that it’s legible to people besides myself.

Once I have pretty good idea of the number of panels on the page and general pacing, I’ll start creating thumbnail sketches (tiny pencil drawings in my sketchbook) to get a better understanding of how I want the page to be laid out. These tiny sketches are only a bout 3″ square. This process can go quickly (one thumbnail and I’m done) or not (sometimes I’ll create several before I decide on a suitable layout) depending on the complexity of the page.

Once I decide on the layout of the page, I create a mock-up in Adobe Illustrator, a vector art program, to really hone the panel borders, gutter widths, and text placement. I start with a template of the panel borders and begin to pull vertical and horizontal gutter-templates on top to form the panels. I also have some standard text sizes, balloon shapes, and even head shapes to place when needed.

Here is the final layout cleaned-up a bit. I use Illustrator’s Pathfinder palette to finalize the borders and panel shapes.

The next several steps discuss my method of creating the perspective grid I use for my more complex environmental shots. As you’ll see in another picture or so, I’ve started using the computer to help me with the perspective basics. However, about a third of the time, I’ll still create perspective grids the old-fashioned way, by mapping-out vanishing points and using a ruler. In this image, you can see that the vanishing points are WAY off the paper, so I taped down the page and used a bit of extra tape to mark the vanishing point (way over to the right on the table).

However, the majority of the time I create a perspective grid, I’ll construct it using the same vector art program, Adobe Illustrator. I use my thumbnail image as a guide to figuring out approximately where the vanishing points will be. Then I’ll create a couple of lines, like you see below, to follow those perspective lines.

Illustrator has this handy tool called the Blend Tool. This allows you to, among other things, create a specified number of steps between objects. Using the blend tool, all I have to do is click the first line, then the second, tell it how many steps I want in between, and viola, I have one half of my perspective grid.

Thanks to the copy and paste functions available in pretty much any application on the market, I’ve simply copied and reversed the first blend in order to create a 2-point perspective grid. Sometimes a simple copy and paste will work, but more often than not I’ll have to repeat the last couple steps to create a different angled blend.

So what good do all these lines do? Well, they serve as the basic building blocks for many of the background elements. The only challenge now is containing all these grid lines inside the one panel where they belong. Here you see the panel they’ll fit inside.

Illustrator also has a masking function. So, after I create the larger grid, I can essentially crop it to fit inside the appropriate panel size.

Here it is in the final page layout.

If I know where I want the characters to appear in the panels, sometimes I’ll include a vector head shape to position them. I keep a head-template in my files that I can drag, copy, resize, etc to help me compose the page.

Once I have the panel borders, word balloons, perspective grid, and character positions solidified, I’ll convert the file to something graphic artists call “non-reproductive blue,” which is just a fancy way of saying light blue. Basically, when this page is completely illustrated and inked (wait for a few more photos) we will scan the page back into the computer and the blue lines will not show up. That means no erasing, which means less work! (I’ll talk more about this black magic in a few slides.)

The following image is the same as the previous one. The only difference is that I darkened the lines for the benefit of this demonstration. It’s a bit hard to decipher all those blue lines when they’re on the screen.

Now that I have the foundation of my page created, I print all that non-reproductive blue line stuff on a piece of bristol. Bristol is a heavier cardstock used by illustrators. It’s considerably more substantial in weight and accepts ink a lot better than something like computer paper. I’ll often have students ask me, “Can you put that thick bristol through a printer?” My response is usually something like, “There’s one way to find out.” I have a top loading color inkjet printer that seems to accept it just fine. It usually needs a bit of coaxing (i.e. forcing) to get started, but once it starts feeding into the printer, I don’t have any problems.

This next image is what things look like once I start illustrating. I use a mechanical pencil with blue lead (that’s right, more non-reproductive blue) to illustrate everything on the page. …and, yes, I realize this image is from a different page, but alas, I didn’t have a shot of this stage from ATOD9 page #11.

Below you see page #11 completely penciled. The perspective grid that I created on the computer is just a faint series of lines. Those were only printed to help me figure out how the walkways, benches, stairs, and buildings would line-up. I used this page to demo my process because of this specific panel, as it has a pretty easy to follow perspective grid. I’ll show you a few more perspective-grid-based environmental panels of mine at the end of this post.

Now that the pencils are complete, it’s time to start inking. This is how comic book artists make it look like they know exactly where to put their pen from the second it hits the page. They’ll draw everything in pencil first, then ink on top of that.

I tend to conceptualize penciling as the “thinky” part of making comics and inking as the more meditative or assembly-line element (depending on my mood that day) of making comics. When penciling I’m making decisions and praying to god what comes out of my hand resembles what I see in my head. It doesn’t always. In that case there’s erasing and retrying. Once it’s time to ink the page, my blueprint is already in front of me. Sure, there are still inking decisions to make, but they’re usually determined by an imagined light source within the environment of the panel or a point of emphasis. For me, those kinds of decisions are far less intimidating than starting from nothing.

In order to make this process of RE-illustrating everything a little less daunting, I’ve developed an order for my inking. I usually start with the text and the panel borders, followed by the figures, then the background. I try to remain conscious of line quality (variable width for characters and living things, fixed-width for inanimate objects) and width (thicker lines for foregrounded subjects or elements of focus and thinner lines for objects further back in space).

Now that the inking is complete, it’s time to scan it back into the computer to do some clean-up and corrections. For this stage I’ll zoom-in a bit to make it easier to see what’s happening. Below you’ll see a close-up of the first panel. You can see all the blue penciled construction lines underneath the inks.

I don’t want any of those pencil lines to show up in the final prints for the book, so once the page is scanned into the computer I’ll convert it to grayscale (see image below, only shades of grey).

Once the images is converted to grayscale, then I “threshold” out all the grays so that I am left with only black and white pixels, nothing in between, no traces of grey. (For the Photoshop noobs, go to Image Menu -> Adjustments -> Threshold) This is done to make the final printed page appear to have clean and crisp line edges. If you were to print your image in grayscale and without thresholding, your lines would print with fuzzy edges. Okay, I think I just bored myself. Let’s move on to the next step.

Let’s look even closer to talk about some more exciting aspects of technical prepress and output of line quality. If you zoom into the lineart, you’ll be able to see the individual pixels that form the line. This is a result of the thresholding from the prior step. This is often scary to the amateur artist because they think the print will output with these jagged lines. The truth of the matter is, when you’re looking at a file like this, it’s equivalent to looking under a microscope. NO ONE will ever see your file like this except you. Plus, if you have your resolution set properly (at least 600 dots per inch), the image will be so detailed that you won’t be able to make out the individual pixel edges when printed.

This is also the point at which I start to clean up any stray lines, lettering errors, or other mistakes I made while inking. I’ve highlighted a few here.

With a bit of digital touch-up, the file is now complete.

This is what it looks like when the page is ready to print.

Once I do that a couple dozen more times, I’m ready to print the entire book (and do a happy-dance)!

That’s it! That’s how I’ve been making And Then One Day for the past 7 years. Not much has changed since I began doing this in 2004, but as I mentioned last post, that’s likely to change soon.

I also mentioned above that I would include a few more environmental process images going from thumbnail to perspective grid to pencils to inked panels. This working method was a pretty huge leap in quality for my work during this past book, so I’m pretty excited to show you these.

In addition to the perspective grids, I also started working with a lot of reference photography when creating And Then One Day #9. Many of the scenes featured in this book are actual environments from the campus of San Diego State University. Shortly before starting work on this book, I took a trip back to California and snapped several dozen photographs around SDSU. This slideshow includes several reference photos I used to create this one particular panel from And Then One Day #9 – pg 10.

Thanks for stopping by, and for the kind words. …and by all means, steal away! 🙂

Regarding the blue-line printing on bristol, it’s not that difficult. I have a top-feeding inkjet printer and once I cut my bristol to 8.5″ wide, I just jam it right through. Sometimes it takes a bit of coaxing at the start, due to the thickness, but once the feeders get a hold of it, the page is good to go from there.

I’m not sure if you were referring to the process of creating a page or actually putting together this post when talking about the “crazy amount of work,” but it probably applies to both. Ha-ha!

However, the pages, while time consuming, seem to get less and less daunting each time I tackle another. (Although I will admit a fair amount of trepidation each time I start. Thankfully, the self-imposed weekly deadline really helps me to assure that the trepidation won’t last for long.)

Anyhow, thanks a bunch for leaving a comment, and for all your help promoting my work, Sherief. I may sound like a broken record, but I’m no less sincere each time I tell you how much I appreciate your reposts of my comics.

Just wanted to add my thanks as well. Since hearing about your site through CSBG, I’ve been impressed with your willingness to share your insights on the creative process, the production process, and the marketing of your work. If this website is a reflection of your teaching, I hope you’re getting excellent evaluations from your students!

Receiving comments like yours makes crafting a post like this worthwhile. It’s nice to hear when something is working, so thanks for your feedback. Just a quick question, have we met in person before? Pardon my faulty memory if we have, but regardless, I’m glad to hear that Brian Cronan’s writing (on Comics Should Be Good) is sending some folks my way. He’s been supporting me since my first mini-comics, so I have a soft spot in my heart for CSBG. 🙂

Always great seein’ you around these parts. Glad to hear the slideshow sufficiently stunned you. 😉

P.S. I wore the sweatshirt you made for me a couple days during Comic-Con this past week (it was FREEZING this year) and I had an endless stream of compliments on it. Might be time to go into heavy production on those puppies.

Hello again, and thanks for reassuring me. 🙂 I’m not sure where you’re located, but I tour occasionally, so perhaps we’ll be able to meet one of these days. I’m heading to 12 different states starting at the end of this week, so maybe I’ll see you along the route. (I know it’s a long shot, but figured I’d mention it.)

I’m glad you’re finding this useful, or at least interesting. I know I always enjoy when other artists take the time to break down their process. I figured after 7 years of doing this, it was about time I do the same.

Hey Ryan,
I was just wondering, I noticed the layouts of the grids aren’t followed 100%. For instance in the last example with the steeple the ^ part doesn’t follow the blue line grid except for the lines facing up and to the left at the base. (I’m sorry, it’s really hard to write that out. I’m a ‘point and explain’ person when it comes to anything) My question is, what part of the grid do you strictly adhere to, and what influences whether or not an artist should follow the blue grid lines? Sorry if you have no idea what i’m talking about xD

I’m not certain which perspective grid example you’re referring to, but it doesn’t matter much as all the examples on this page are made with 2-point perspective grids. Basically, if you can imagine taking a camera from the existing viewing angle of any of those panels and moving it up so that it points straight-down at the ground (map-view, as I like to call it), you would see a bunch of the stuff on the ground (buildings, sidewalks, banners, etc) laid-out in a grid pattern. Well, when you shift the “camera” back down to a birds eye view (looking downward from a 45 degree angle or so) you start to see that there are a BUNCH of parallel lines that move upward in space (connection of building to ground, horizontal window edges, horizontal door edges, tops of buildings, edges of awnings, molding, roof lines, etc) those are all horizontal elements and parallel to lots of other horizontal elements. Typically they are set up in a grid pattern at a 90 degree angle from other horizontal elements, and when each of these sets of parallel lines recede into space, they appear to get closer to one another. Now, the perspective grid doesn’t mean you have to set each horizontal line of your environment directly on a grid line, it can fall somewhere in-between. But based on the angle of the surrounding perspective grid lines, you’ll know approximately at what rate of recession (or angle) that line should be drawn.

I know that’s a lot of words to explain a very visual concept, but I hope it helps a little.

The first step to becoming comfortable with this stuff is to read read read…which you’re obviously doing here (kudos!), but I’d recommend these books:

The next thing to do is take that new-found knowledge and practice practice practice.

After you’ve made some environmental drawings you’re proud of, show them to some trusted artist colleagues, preferably artists who are a lot better than you (thankfully, I have many such friends), who will truthfully tell you areas where you could improve.

Finally, continue doing that your whole life. 😀

I hope this helps, Louis. I really appreciate you stopping by and asking a question. I wish you all the best with your work in comics.